Books Read in March 2026

 

March was a very good reading month for me. I enjoyed every book I read. There was enough variety to make me happy. A nonfiction graphic novel, an epistolary novel, science fantasy, a book of short stories in the historical fiction genre, a vintage mystery and two contemporary mysteries.

Here are the books I read:

Graphic novel / Nonfiction

Do Admit! (2025) by Mimi Pond (Writer and Artist)

My husband and I both read this graphic nonfiction book in March. It was perfect book for me. I am very interested in reading about the Mitford sisters. Mimi Pond writes about her own obsession with the Mitfords in this book. The full title is Do Admit!: The Mitford Sisters and Me. The art is gorgeous and the information is presented well. The only problem with this book is that it is so full of information that I am sure I missed a lot the first time I read it. I will definitely have to read it again.

Epistolary Fiction

The Correspondent (2025) by Virginia Evans

This is an epistolary novel, made up of the correspondence in letters and emails, etc. of an older retired woman. I have always enjoyed this type of novel, and this one was especially good. The main character is Sybil Van Antwerp and she spends most of her time writing letters to people. Some of her friends and relatives respond and some of the famous people, often authors, respond. Others just email her and she does not like that kind of correspondence very much. She is cranky at times and very outspoken about her views and feelings. 

I loved that Sybil included what she was reading in almost every letter she wrote, and also asked the recipient what they were reading. Occasionally Sybil would give her opinion or thoughts on the books. Over time, the reader discovers more about Sybil and events in her life. Family relationships are a big part of the story, and I always like reading about families. The end of the book was extremely moving, and I was very emotional at times.

Science Fantasy

A Wrinkle in Time (1962) by Madeleine L'Engle

This is a classic young adult science fantasy novel about three children who have an adventure in space and time. The main characters are Margaret Murry (called Meg), her younger brother Charles Wallace Murry, and their friend, Calvin. Calvin is two years older than Meg, and Charles Wallace is much younger than either of them, but they make a great team working together. A Wrinkle in Time is the first book in the Time Quintet. I did not know this until after I had read the book and reviewed it, but each book in the Time Quintet is very different and has a different focus. See my review.

Crime Fiction

Contemplation of a Crime (2025) by Susan Juby

Juby is a Canadian author, and the setting is a small island off Vancouver Island. This is the third book in a mystery series about a butler with a Buddhist / contemplative background. Helen Thorpe works for a very rich couple and she ends up having to rescue her boss after he and his son are kidnapped. All of the characters are eccentric. This is the third in a series and I liked the first two also. I like the way that the main character handles unexpected and stressful events. My favorite part of the book is the mindfulness theme. Helen is a very appealing character, who is (almost) never ruffled by anything.

A Brush with Death (1950) by Sheila Pim

Between 1945 and 1952, Sheila Pim, an Irish crime novelist and horticulturist, published four mysteries set in Ireland and with a focus on gardening. A Brush with Death was the third of those mystery novels, published in 1950. The story involves two families. Paul and Hester Fennelly and their daughter Barbara live in Dublin. Hester's brother, Fergus Gandon, is a well-known artist who lives in an isolated rural area with his wife, Nell, and their three young children. They live in the Dower House of Castle Kiskour, and act as caretakers for Lord Kiskour when he is away, which is much of the time. See my review.

Sidney Chambers and the Perils of the Night (2013) by James Runcie

The Grantchester Mysteries is a series of short story collections by James Runcie. The short stories are all connected and follow the criminal investigations of Sidney Chambers, a vicar in Grantchester. This is the second book in the series.  I enjoyed the first book, and this one was even better. See my review.

First Do No Harm (2026) by S.J. Rozan

This is the 16th book in the Lydia Chin / Bill Smith series. They are private investigators. Bill Smith lives in Manhattan; Lydia Chin is an American-born Chinese who lives in New York’s Chinatown with her mother. They are not officially partners but they often work together. The unique element in this series is that the narrator of the books alternates. Usually books centered on Bill's cases are grittier; Lydia's cases are more fun. In this book, Lydia's brother, a doctor who is in charge of the ER department, has asked her to suggest a lawyer for a man who works in the hospital morgue, who has been accused of the murder of a nurse. The lawyer then calls in Lydia and Bill to investigate when the morgue assistant is arrested. This is an eye-opening view of hospital politics and corruption. S.J. Rozan is one of my favorite authors and I have read all of the books in this series. I loved this book.

For the past month and a half we have been working on cleaning up and redoing the two garden beds we have at the front of our condominium. We still are working on potting a lot of new plants, mostly geraniums and succulents. We have been to the nearby plant nursery multiple times to get plants, bark, and potting soil. The photos at the top and bottom of the post were taken by my husband at the nursery. Click on the images for the best viewing quality.

Short Story Wednesday: Sidney Chambers and the Perils of the Night

 

The Grantchester Mysteries is a series of short story collections by James Runcie. The short stories are all connected and follow the criminal investigations of Sidney Chambers, a vicar in Grantchester. 

Sidney Chambers and the Peril of the Night is the second book in the series. I read the first book (Sidney Chambers and the Shadow of Death) in 2025 and I liked the stories so much that I started reading the next set of stories in late February. 

There were only six stories in this collection, and they are all longish stories, between 50-75 pages each, so I consider them novellas. The crimes are not all murders, but they are all treated seriously. 

"The Perils of the Night" is the first story in the book and takes place in January 1955. Valentine Lyall is a research fellow at Corpus Christi college, the same college Sidney attended. One evening, he and three other men at the college decide to scale one of four octagonal turrets of the King's College chapel as a prank. This results in a fall that kills Valentine Lyall. Sidney is drawn into an investigation into whether the death was accidental or not. There is suspicion that espionage is involved, and the story takes an unusual turn. I found the ending of this story to be interesting but also unsettling.

In the third story, "Unholy Week," Sidney is in the midst of Easter activities, plus he is expecting a visit from his German friend, Hildegarde. He has visited Hildegarde several times in Germany but this is her first trip back to Grantchester since they met several years earlier. While she is visiting, a mathematics teacher dies in his bath and the death is blamed on a heart attack. Both Hildegarde and Sidney suspect foul play and they investigate together. One of my favorite stories, and the longest one at 75 pages.

The last two stories are exceptional good. Both take place in 1961. In "The Uncertainty Principle," Sidney suspects that Amanda's newest beau is not all he claims to be. Amanda is a friend from childhood, and Sidney and Amanda have always been attracted to each other. This one has some very funny moments, but it is also very sad.

In "Appointment in Berlin," Sidney visits Hildegarde. When he gets there, he finds that Hildegarde has gone to East Germany to see her mother in the hospital, after she had a serious fall. He goes to meet her there, but is detained by officials on the way. This story has ties back to the first story in the book. Their return to Berlin is exciting. 

I am enjoying these stories very much and I can't wait until I can get a copy of the third book of stories. We have started watching the Grantchester TV series. There are differences, but I like both versions. 

Books Read in November and December 2025

 

I had some very good reading in both November and December of 2025. Seven books per month. I completed two short story books, which is unusual. I usually read a few stories from a collection and take forever to finish the book. Plus two nonfiction books! And a book from my Classics Club list. I managed to complete my goal of reading six books by Elizabeth Strout in 2025.

So here are the 14 books I read...

Nonfiction

Eight Days in May (2020) by Volker Ullrich, translated by Jefferson Chase

The subtitle of this book is "The Final Collapse of the Third Reich." My husband suggested this book to me. It was a perfect nonfiction read for me and the text was very readable, not dry at all. It covers the events that took place in Germany in the eight days following Hitler's death by suicide on April 30, 1945. May 8th, 1945 was the day when Germany unconditionally surrendered to the Allied forces. I learned so much about the events in Germany at that time. The book was a good length, 271 pages of text, plus a section of notes citing the author's sources. Volker Ullrich is a German historian and journalist.

Dear California (2023), edited by David Kipen

I borrowed this book from my husband; he read it in 2024 and liked it a lot. I read it off and on throughout 2025. For the most part I found this to be a very interesting book, but it had its highs and lows. Some of the entries are over a page long, but many are only a few sentences. The entries for each day may cover several years, sometimes as early as the 1600s or the 1800s, and others as late as 2020, during the height of Covid. That can be confusing at times. 

Examples of events covered:  For April 18 there are two entries for 1906, immediately after the San Francisco Earthquake. The third entry is from Dylan Thomas, while in Hollywood, to his wife back in Laugharne, a town on the south coast of Carmarthenshire, Wales. The entries from various famous writers who spent some time in Hollywood were especially interesting; same for the entries from people who were interned in the American internment camps during World War II.

Fiction

The Women (2024) by Kristin Hannah

One of the author's goals in writing this book was to recognize the contribution of the women in the armed forces who went to Vietnam and worked as nurses in the hospitals which were near to the fighting. I don't think the book was perfect, but I learned so much about the Vietnam War between 1966 - 1968, and the role of the nurses in the hospitals there, that it eliminated all quibbles that I had with the book. I was born in 1948, and I felt like I should have known much more about the events that took place there. About half of the book is about the years that the protagonist was in Vietnam, and the second half is about her return to the US and the difficulties of adjusting to normal life and dealing with the traumas that she experienced in Vietnam. Not a fun book but an important one, for me.

Lucy by the Sea (2022) and Tell Me Everything (2024) by Elizabeth Strout

I read Oh, William! by Strout in early October. I read Lucy by the Sea and Tell Me Everything in November. I have loved all the books that feature Lucy Barton. But I find it almost impossible to review them. Personally, I would not have enjoyed reading them if I had known much about the books in advance. In My Name is Lucy Barton, Lucy tells of one event in her life while she is married to William, and I really disliked him in that story. In each succeeding novel about their relationship I grew to understand him and Lucy more. Lucy by the Sea takes place during the Covid-19 pandemic. In Tell Me Everything, Olive Kitteridge meets Lucy, and Bob Burgess plays a bigger part. I loved all of those books.

Goodbye to Berlin (1939) by Christopher Isherwood 

This book was on my Classics Club List. I did not particularly enjoy reading it, I found it too depressing, but I think I am in the minority. Before reading it, I did not realize that it is a series of six connected short stories. "Sally Bowles" is about one of the characters in the film, Cabaret, although I did not see many similarities between the story and the film. I liked the connections between the stories, although it took me a while to pick up on some of them. "On Ruegen Island" is about three young men spending the summer on an island.  "The Nowaks" is about a strange and impoverished family that Christopher lives with; Otto Nowak was one of the characters in the previous story. In "The Nowaks", they talk about the Landauer family, which is the subject of the fifth story.

Anxious People (2019) by Fredrik Backman, translated by Neil Smith

This is another book that is really impossible for me to describe. This is only the second book I read by Backman. I was very impressed by this book; it is very humorous, but it also has its sad moments and talks about some serious subjects, such as suicide, divorce, losing a spouse to an illness. A person decides to rob a bank, but they don't really know what they are doing and it ends up turning into a hostage situation. I found the book very confusing at times, but still very readable and uplifting. My favorite characters are the two policemen.

Mystery / Time Travel / Science Fiction

The Frozen People (2025) by Elly Griffiths

This is the start of a new time travel/mystery series. Ali Dawson is a detective in a Cold Case department, and the group attempts to solve crimes by going back in time for clues. I liked the premise, the characters, and the story was good. The level of tension was just right. Some of the story strains disbelief, but the story is enough fun that I was not bothered by that.

Crime Fiction

El Dorado Drive (2025) by Megan Abbott

The first book I read by Megan Abbott was Queenpin, which won an Edgar award. It was a great book, beautifully written, but also very, very tense. I knew I would like the setting of El Dorado Drive (Detroit, Grosse Point, in 2008-2009, when the economy was in such bad shape) and it was not as tense as I expected. It is a thriller; I found it to be fast-paced, a page turner. And it is about a family of three sisters, and their money problems. The family relationships pulled me in. Some reviewers talked about it being too slow but I did not see that at all. So I will be reading more by Abbott. I have three of her novels, including Turnout, Beware the Woman, and You Will Know Me.

The Guest List (2020) by Lucy Foley

I was surprised that I ended up reading two thrillers in December. They were both entertaining, but El Dorado Drive had more depth. The Guest List is set on a tiny isolated island off the coast of Ireland; the characters are on the island to attend the wedding of a TV star and the publisher of a well-known magazine. Many of the characters have baggage from their childhoods; most are unlikeable and/or superficial. 

Sidney Chambers and the Shadow of Death (2012) by James Runcie

The Grantchester Mysteries is a series of short story collections by James Runcie. The stories are all connected and follow the investigations of Sidney Chambers, a vicar in Grantchester. There were only six short stories in the collection, and they are all novella length. I covered two of the short stories HERE and HERE.

The Shanghai Moon (2009) by S.J. Rozan

This was a reread of the ninth book in the Lydia Chin & Bill Smith series. I read it about 15 years ago, and I remember at the time I did not enjoy the story, even though Rozan is one of my favorite authors. I have no idea why I did not like it originally, because the subject matter is something I am currently interested in. Lydia is working on a job to help recover stolen jewels that once belonged to a Jewish refugee who fled from Austria to Shanghai in 1938, so it includes some history from that pre-WWII time. For me, the biggest attraction of this series are the characters. Not only are the main characters interesting, but Lydia's family members who have recurring roles in the books are well done, and many of the secondary characters are fully developed. After this reread, I rank this book as a favorite in the series.

The Big Four (1927) by Agatha Christie

I have read many negative comments on The Big Four, but in my opinion it is not that bad. It is sort of spy fiction and adventure. I certainly would not recommend this one as anyone's first Poirot book; it is not representative of the series. I mostly enjoyed the interplay between Captain Hastings and Poirot, and did not take the plot all that seriously. I read that the novel was a mashup of several short stories that Christie wrote earlier, and that explains why it feels disjointed and disorganized at times.

Christmas Stalkings (1991) edited by Charlotte Macleod

This was the second Christmas short story anthology edited by Charlotte MacLeod. All of the stories in the book appeared in print for the first time in this book. I covered all of the stories in this book in three posts in December. My favorite short story in the book was "A Political Necessity" by Robert Barnard (reviewed here), although all of them were good.

End of Year notes

I read 78 books in 2025, compared to 89 in 2024. The longest book I read was 800 pages: The Charm School by Nelson DeMille. The average number of pages for the books I read was 323. In 2024, that number was 302, which means I must have read more longer books in 2025.

• I read less mysteries than last year, 40 as compared to 48 in 2023. Only 6 of the mysteries published were before 1970, which is a big change from my early blogging years, but in line with last year's reading.
• I read 6 nonfiction books.
• My reading included 13 books in the science fiction or fantasy genres, which is higher than last year.
• I read 16 novels that I categorize as general fiction.

• I completed 8 short story books, and read 16 books by authors from Japan, Ireland, Canada, Denmark, Argentina, Australia, and Germany.

Short Story Wednesday: Sidney Chambers and the Shadow of Death by James Runcie

 

The Grantchester Mysteries is a series of short story collections by James Runcie. The short stories are all connected and follow the criminal investigations of Sidney Chambers, a vicar in Grantchester. The crimes are not all murders, but they are all treated seriously. There were only six short stories in this collection, and they are not very short. The shortest one was 50 pages, the longest was 80 pages, so some of them count as novellas?  Anyway, I liked all of the stories, not sure which is my favorite, and I now have a copy of the 2nd book in the series. I have not seen the TV series based on this series, but we will try it sometime.

The first story is set in 1953, the coronation year of Queen Elizabeth II. I read that story back in October 2025 and discussed it in this post.

I finished reading all of the stories in Sidney Chambers and the Shadow of Death in early December and I enjoyed them very much. I like that Sidney is a vicar in the Church of England; I enjoy mysteries with a clerical setting. I admit that the various titles used in the Church of England are confusing to me, but the more I read these stories the closer I come to a rough understanding of the different roles.

"A Question of Trust"

This is the second story in the book and it begins on December 31st, 1953. Sidney is taking the train to London to visit with some family and friends. He then takes a bus to St. John's Wood, where he will attend a New Year's Eve dinner party at the home of his friend Nigel, one of the most promising MPs in the country. His sister Jenny, her new boyfriend, and Jenny's friend and flatmate Amanda Kendall will also be at the dinner. Sidney has known Amanda for years, and has always been attracted to her, but once he decided to become a clergyman, he was no longer considered a viable marriage partner for her.

At the dinner party, Amanda's engagement ring is stolen. The ring was very valuable and her fiance is understandably upset. It is suggested that Sidney help look into how the ring could have disappeared.

Several of the characters in this story show up in later stories, and I like the continuity from story to story. Sidney questions whether he should be involving himself in investigating crimes, in view of his profession. He often questions his beliefs but he is dedicated to his work; I like his philosophizing (to himself, usually) on various issues.

Other stories in the book deal with (1) the investigation of forgeries and thefts of valuable art works;  (2) a man murdered on stage, in a play that Sidney has a small part in; (3) a death at a jazz club; and (4) a doctor who may be helping older persons in the village towards death after long illnesses.

Short Story Wednesday: The Grantchester Mysteries

 

The Grantchester Mysteries consists of six short story collections by James Runcie. The short stories are all connected and follow the investigations of Sidney Chambers, a vicar in Grantchester. This first story is set in 1953, the coronation year of Queen Elizabeth II. 

Years ago, I read several reviews of the stories in the Grantchester TV series and some reviewers said that the TV episodes were better than the short stories. So for a while I avoided reading the stories. I still haven't seen the TV series, but now I have read the first story in Sidney Chambers and the Shadow of Death and I enjoyed it very much. 

"The Shadow of Death"

First paragraph:

Canon Sidney Chambers had never intended to become a detective. Indeed, it came about quite by chance, after a funeral, when a handsome woman of indeterminate age voiced her suspicion that the recent death of a Cambridge solicitor was not suicide, as had been widely reported, but murder.

The death is a suicide and the lover of the dead man, Pamela Morton, is the woman who asks Sidney to look into it. She doesn't believe that he would commit suicide. Sidney is a vicar, and although he doesn't see himself as suited to investigating such an issue, he agrees to talk to various people who knew the dead man. 

It helps that he has a good friend, Inspector Keating, who worked on the investigation of the man's death. However, his friend is somewhat irritated by Sidney's interest, and doesn't see that there is evidence that points to murder.

Other characters are:

• the wife of the dead man;
• the dead man's secretary;
• and his business partner, who is married to the dead man's lover.

I liked this first story very much. I enjoyed meeting the protagonist, Canon Sidney Sheldon. I liked Sidney's musings on his faith, and his misgivings on getting himself involved in investigating a possible crime. I thought the mystery was put together well, and I liked the depictions of the various characters. 

This first story is 80 pages long, so it is basically a novella. The other five stories in the book range from 50 to 70 pages in length.